The invention relates to an oven, comprising a housing provided with means for supplying steam into the interior of said housing, in connection with the setting of a cooking condition, such as the temperature and/or relative humidity, and also a conveyor belt which runs through the housing and on which food products to be heated can be accommodated, which conveyor belt passes through at least one path with one or more windings above one another.
Such a steam oven is known. The cooking process in such an oven is brought about mainly by the fact that the steam supplied into the housing condenses on the products. This causes heat transfer to occur, in such a way that the products are cooked. In order to obtain a desired degree of cooking, the temperature and/or the humidity are measured and subsequently regulated and maintained by means of the steam injection.
The belt is usually coiled around the outside of a rotatable drum with vertical axis. The steam is supplied at a central point, for example in the flow channel placed behind a fan for circulating the steam atmosphere. This means that the steam enters on the outside of the windings and flows over the surface of the windings and the outermost products lying thereon to the inside of the windings, adjacent to the rotating drum.
The steam atmosphere delivers heat along its path over the windings, with the result that the products on the inside are served with a less warm mixture of steam and air than the products on the outside. The disadvantage of such uneven heating is that the outermost products are overcooked. The reason for this is that the core temperature of the products situated in the least warm zone must have reached a certain minimum. This generally results in weight loss or lower quality of the overcooked products, which in economic terms gives rise to a major loss item.